Memory systems are used in many electronic devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), laptop computers, mobile phones and digital cameras. Recent memory chip designs, particularly those that use 3D-stacked structures, may exhibit increased data density and power density. With the use of multi-channel and sub-ranked memories, as well as partitioning of workloads across channels, it is possible for thermal hotspots to arise in the memory system.
Therefore, there exists a general need to perform thermal management, such as by energy management and resource sharing or workload fairness schemes to reduce or eliminate hotspots. There also exists a general need for request stream prioritization and transaction throttling mechanisms for energy management and resource sharing or workload fairness schemes.